Spanish Poetry: The Generation of 50 and Novísimos

The Generation of 50 Poets

The Generation of 50 refers to a group of Spanish poets who began publishing in the 1950s. Some younger poets, while not strictly part of the group, shared their critical vision of reality, common ethical attitudes, and a similar focus on community problems. For example, their concerns included the individual's relationship with their environment, social dissent, and denunciation.

A key feature of these poets was their humanist attitude, demonstrating a deep concern for human problems—social, moral, existential, and historical. This concern often manifested as an open political or social statement, though always rooted in their personal perspective. Most exhibited a conscious stylistic will and a diligent care for language and poetic forms. They returned to eternal themes of poetry such as love and pain, alongside more personal themes like friendship and family.

Ángel González

His poetry alternated between socially committed content and more intimate, personal themes. Notable works include Grado elemental and Mundo a Grado.

Jose Angel Valente

Known for his intellectual and symbolist tone, Valente's work often started from everyday life or an immediate situation, transcending into realms of knowledge through an extreme purification of language that intensified over the years. Key works include Poemas a Lázaro and La esperanza.

Jaime Gil de Viedma

He exerted significant influence on the contemporary trend known as experiential poetry. His ironic and conversational poetry, close to everyday life, focused on unmasking the contradictions of the bourgeoisie and his own experiences, leading him to skepticism and a critical view of reality. Prominent works include Compañeros de viaje and Poemas póstumos.

Antonio Gamoneda

His poetry critically balanced social commentary with the expression of personal experience and biography, often in a painful equilibrium with the external world. Notable works include Blues castellano and Sublevación inmóvil.

Claudio Rodriguez

His poetry harmonized surrealist imagery, formal classicism, and the transparency of the landscape, aiming to convey the clarity of human solidarity and the desire to share his experience with others. This humanistic approach continued in his books Conjuros and El vuelo de la celebración.

The Generation of the Last Things

Two key dates mark this phase: 1966, the year Pere Gimferrer published Arde el mar (The Burning Sea), a book that broke with previous poetic traditions; and 1970, when José María Castellet published Nueve novísimos poetas españoles (Nine Newest Spanish Poets), an anthology that gave the generation its name.

The Novísimos (or Generation of the Last Things) emerged as an avant-garde movement, introducing a new language that embraced formal experimentalism. These poets, in fact, no longer believed that poetry could change reality. Consequently, they distanced themselves from social commitment, testimony, or solidarity, adopting a more formalistic approach.

Key Features of the Novísimos

Castellet himself noted their features in the anthology:

• Disregard for traditional formulas and prescriptive rules, embracing formal freedom.
• Use of modern and elliptical techniques, including automatic writing.
• Introduction of exotic elements derived from literary readings.
• Emphasis on artificiality.

However, apart from so-called experimental visual poetry, there was little truly new in this movement. In terms of content, for example, they either turned their attention to issues and questions of cultural and historical origin from other eras, such as art and music (leading them to be called culturalists), or, with exceptions, assimilated a frivolous mythology drawn from movies, popular music, or comics.

Formally, they reflected twentieth-century avant-garde movements, especially surrealism (influenced by Aleixandre and Postismo), employing lush language that alternated opaque and visionary images with other novel aspects (such as spatial structures reminiscent of Mallarmé or the cultured metrics of Modernism). Yet, they did not entirely abandon the conversational tone found in some poets of the Generation of 50.

Prominent Novísimos Poets

Its most prominent representatives, born between 1939 and 1950, include:

• Poets with culturalist and surrealist tendencies: Pere Gimferrer, Guillermo Carnero (Dibujo de la muerte).
• Poets with more colloquial, ironic, and critical tendencies: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Praga), Leopoldo María Panero (Teoría).